Keep Megaupload out of our server seizure case, US lawyers say

When the US government shut down file-sharing site Megaupload, it also grabbed the service's US-based servers, located at Carpathia Hosting and other companies. That inspired legal demands from Kyle Goodwin, an Ohio man who makes his living videotaping high school sports events, and wants his files back. But the government shot back with a brief suggesting that Goodwin wasn't exactly "innocent," since he'd also uploaded allegedly pirated music files to his account.

Now Mega wants to intervene in the dispute between the government and Kyle Goodwin—and government lawyers want to keep Megaupload well out of it. In a brief filed yesterday, prosecutors say that while it's fine for someone from Megaupload to be a witness in Goodwin's case, the service absolutely should not be allowed in as a party to the case.

In this new brief, the government accuses Megaupload of trying to use Goodwin's case as a way to battle over its own criminal case—while it actually delays that case from moving forward.

"Megaupload seeks to intervene in this civil dispute, where it lacks standing, to pre-litigate the pending criminal case, where it has not appeared," write government lawyers in their brief. "Here, Megaupload seeks to circumvent numerous procedural rules, as well as basic legal principles, by selectively appearing as a party in one civil proceeding that parallels the criminal prosecution, while seeking to stay all others."

Megaupload chief Kim Dotcom and his lawyers got very interested in Goodwin's case, after it led to documents being unsealed, which they believe aid their case greatly. Getting involved as a party in Goodwin's case would allow Megaupload's lawyers to better attack the warrants that resulted in criminal action.

The US is still trying to get Dotcom extradited from New Zealand—so far without success. Meanwhile, Dotcom has launched a new service called Mega; it was unveiled at a splashy party last month at the Dotcom Mansion.

179 Reader Comments

Yes, a premature death is not comparable to copyright infringement, it's far worse.

...

In this case, however, the crime was DIRECT - HE was committing the crime. Ergo, he is directly responsible. It was his server which was being used, with his full knowledge and consent, to distribute illegal material. Ergo, he is directly guilty of the crime, especially given he both paid people to upload such content and profited from downloads of it.

I would check the definition of indirectly and directly from a dictionary if I were you. That would be same as claiming post office is directly responsible for all drug traffic that goes through post, and committing directly a crime.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

Knowingly and deliberately distributing the copyrighted content of others for profit is illegal, criminal copyright infringement, and much of that content was hosted on American servers, and was committed against American companies, and distributed to Americans, and uploaded by Americans. All of which means the good old US of A has jurisdiction over the crimes committed, because the crimes in question were indeed committed on American soil, against Americans, sometimes having other Americans as accessories to the criminal behavior

So knowingly selling sports cars in America, driven by americans, killing americans, grieved by americans, In the G old US, that can go over the speed limit, when profiting for it is illegal? If a sports car wouldn't go over the speed limit, it wouldn't sell, and the manufacturer wouldn't profit from it...

Titanium Dragon wrote:

Redo from Start wrote:

You are wrong. With patents you have a right to test the process. And you are wrong also on the "you didnät come up with it" part. There are many times same invention has been made by several inventors, but only one has gotten the patent, and only he has the right to do the product. So even if you came up with the process, it may not be yours.

I am well aware of how the patent system works; in fact, in all probability I understand it better than you do. I am well aware that it is not automatic. I am well aware you have to prove that your patent is valid to the patent office to get your patent.

Your arguing otherwise is patently ridiculous (pun fully intended). Its a strawman argument unrelated to any argument I made.

If the process is nothing new, then I have not produced something, so it gains no protection. That's well accepted. You also cannot protect certain other things (mathematical formulas) because they are intrinsic properties of reality which you cannot claim any ownership over.

It is just an example of another misconception you have. I didn't say anything about validity of the patent, just that the usage of patent information isn't absolute, and that even if you invent something, you may not own it if you don't patent it, or you file later than the other inventor.

It isn't even rare that same invention has been made completely independent. In cases like this there isn't universal system of who gets the ownership of the invention, it differs a bit between countries.

But as usual your comments are entertaining to read, for overstretched logic, limping similes/analogies and unimaginative litany of insults. It's like watching ducks on a icy slope, a lot of quacks, feathers, laughs with no actual content.

In point of fact, you don't have the rights to other people's patented stuff, because the law says so. The 'it's not yours' stuff is a justification that you've invented for copyright and patent law. In the US, copyright and patent law have an explicitly-stated justification that doesn't mention anything about 'it's not yours', nor anything even remotely equivalent to it.

In point of fact, you don't have the right to kill other people because the law says so.

Bad argument is bad.

Strange, when you made this argument, it was (presumably) not a bad one.

As for your reply regarding the motive power of 'it's mine', the fact remains that this isn't the justification for US copyright law. As wonderful as you appear to find your made-up history, it's still not the actual history of the US.

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The system we've got now allows those who have all the money to shut down anyone they like by asserting patent- or copyright-infringement and forcing those accused to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal court. It's an awful system because it encourages people to deliberately avoid looking for patented processes, in order to avoid treble damages for willful infringement, and it greatly advantages the already-powerful (who own lots of copyrights and/or patents) over the new and innovative (who don't have enough money to develop their thing and retain large legal teams).

So in your retardoworld, they can instead just skip the lawsuit, steal everything, and not even bother suing them into the ground because they can just take it themselves and pay nothing for it, making the people even more screwed because they have no way at all to fight back.

Please don't make stupid arguments.

Does the current system get abused? Yes. Is such abuse legal? No.

1. It's odd how your entirely-hypothetical criticisms of someone else's claim are (again, presumably) good arguments, but pointing out flaws in the current system (flaws with evidence supporting them) is stupid.

2. The features that I pointed out don't involve any law-breaking, so punishing 'abusers' is irrelevant.

Ergo, the issue is simple: we need to punish people who abuse the system more throughly.

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In this thread, you started off with a bunch of unsupported assertions that amounted to 'KDC is guilty because I say so; it's obvious.' People told you that you were wrong, and you invented some bizarre analogies (shipping a bomb to some foreign country is a crime? Somebody better tell US arms manufacturers who sell overseas. ), take a tangent to the first amendment (you can call people guilty al you want), and refer people to the indictment...which is the document accusing him of being guilty. Taking the accusation as evidence of the accusation's truth is a circular argument...at best.

See, here's the problem: either you are lying, or you are so incredibly delusional that you believe this is true. Which is it?

So which is it? I said that it is illegal to launch a missile into another country,[/quote]

Titanium Dragon wrote:

...If you ship a bomb to another country,...

I read the [post correctly. You apparently didn't write what you meant, and are blaming me for reading.

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You cannot claim that it is circular when it isn't. The indictment includes a great deal of evidence for its claims because it is required to do so by law.

It isn't a circular argument at all.

The accusation isn't circular. Your pointing to the existence of the accusation as evidence that he's guilty is circular, because we all know that many people have been indicted (with evidence!) and then been cleared of all wrongdoing. That's why we don't just throw in jail/fine/execute people on the basis of an indictment.

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Are you a broken human being who is incapable of even seeing reality, or are you just lying in order to promote your own personal political agenda, or the political agenda of others?

Read my post history and find out. You're the guy who can learn all sorts of stuff really, really fast.

I would check the definition of indirectly and directly from a dictionary if I were you. That would be same as claiming post office is directly responsible for all drug traffic that goes through post, and committing directly a crime.

The post office doesn't create drugs. Megaupload did, in fact, create infringing copies to send out to end users.

Moreover, under safe harbor rules, if you don't know that something bad is going on, you're okay. But he had specific knowledge of illegal content, which means, no DMCA safe harbor. Its the difference between a postman delivering the mail, and some of it happening to contain drugs, and the postman getting paid by the cartels to deliver drugs along with the mail.

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So knowingly selling sports cars in America, driven by americans, killing americans, grieved by americans, In the G old US, that can go over the speed limit, when profiting for it is illegal? If a sports car wouldn't go over the speed limit, it wouldn't sell, and the manufacturer wouldn't profit from it...

I already explained this to you. You have revealed yourself to be a troll. You lose.

hpsgrad wrote:

1. It's odd how your entirely-hypothetical criticisms of someone else's claim are (again, presumably) good arguments, but pointing out flaws in the current system (flaws with evidence supporting them) is stupid.

The problem is that it is an utterly worthless thing to say. "Global warming is real." Yeah, thanks genius. Now, what do we do to fix it? Your suggestion of setting all the oil in the world on fire isn't a good solution, it will only make things worse.

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2. The features that I pointed out don't involve any law-breaking, so punishing 'abusers' is irrelevant.

Knowingly applying for a false patent is fraud. Knowingly filing an illicit lawsuit is also fraud. Both of these are felonies.

And I have already pointed out that the issue is enforcement.

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I read the [post correctly. You apparently didn't write what you meant, and are blaming me for reading.

Ah, I see. I was referring to mail bombs there (ala the Unabomber). Sorry for being unclear.

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The accusation isn't circular. Your pointing to the existence of the accusation as evidence that he's guilty is circular, because we all know that many people have been indicted (with evidence!) and then been cleared of all wrongdoing. That's why we don't just throw in jail/fine/execute people on the basis of an indictment.

It is not circular because the evidence is quite strong. Having emails detailing illegal behavior is pretty uncontrovertable evidence, as opposed to "We found his fingerprints at his girlfriend's house, got in a fight with her the previous evening, he said that "that bitch needs to learn a lesson", there was some of his DNA under her fingernails, and had no alibi", which is evidence but not uncontrovertable evidence. Its possible to explain all of those things away as non-criminal, whereas its rather difficult to explain away an email talking about how you paid someone for uploading popular pirated files, or where you send around links to illegal content in-house in internal emails, proving taht you know that the content isn't supposed to be there.

There's a fundamental difference between those things.

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Read my post history and find out. You're the guy who can learn all sorts of stuff really, really fast.

It is very difficult to distinguish between a liar and abject stupidity in cases where the liar is saying abjectly stupid things. Of course, there's nothing to say that it can't be both.

I still don't get why my government will not admit they fucked up for a good 50 years... For some reason they think it's okay to ignore everyone and go around doing what they please. I mean look at it the corruption just keeps moving it's way down the ladder. It's already at the lowest point where law enforcement can pretty much kill someone and get a paid vacation "erm I mean suspended leave with pay"

I would check the definition of indirectly and directly from a dictionary if I were you. That would be same as claiming post office is directly responsible for all drug traffic that goes through post, and committing directly a crime.

The post office doesn't create drugs. Megaupload did, in fact, create infringing copies to send out to end users.

Moreover, under safe harbor rules, if you don't know that something bad is going on, you're okay. But he had specific knowledge of illegal content, which means, no DMCA safe harbor. Its the difference between a postman delivering the mail, and some of it happening to contain drugs, and the postman getting paid by the cartels to deliver drugs along with the mail.

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So knowingly selling sports cars in America, driven by americans, killing americans, grieved by americans, In the G old US, that can go over the speed limit, when profiting for it is illegal? If a sports car wouldn't go over the speed limit, it wouldn't sell, and the manufacturer wouldn't profit from it...

I already explained this to you. You have revealed yourself to be a troll. You lose.

hpsgrad wrote:

1. It's odd how your entirely-hypothetical criticisms of someone else's claim are (again, presumably) good arguments, but pointing out flaws in the current system (flaws with evidence supporting them) is stupid.

The problem is that it is an utterly worthless thing to say. "Global warming is real." Yeah, thanks genius. Now, what do we do to fix it? Your suggestion of setting all the oil in the world on fire isn't a good solution, it will only make things worse.

Quote:

2. The features that I pointed out don't involve any law-breaking, so punishing 'abusers' is irrelevant.

Knowingly applying for a false patent is fraud. Knowingly filing an illicit lawsuit is also fraud. Both of these are felonies.

And I have already pointed out that the issue is enforcement.

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I read the [post correctly. You apparently didn't write what you meant, and are blaming me for reading.

Ah, I see. I was referring to mail bombs there (ala the Unabomber). Sorry for being unclear.

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The accusation isn't circular. Your pointing to the existence of the accusation as evidence that he's guilty is circular, because we all know that many people have been indicted (with evidence!) and then been cleared of all wrongdoing. That's why we don't just throw in jail/fine/execute people on the basis of an indictment.

It is not circular because the evidence is quite strong. Having emails detailing illegal behavior is pretty uncontrovertable evidence, as opposed to "We found his fingerprints at his girlfriend's house, got in a fight with her the previous evening, he said that "that bitch needs to learn a lesson", there was some of his DNA under her fingernails, and had no alibi", which is evidence but not uncontrovertable evidence. Its possible to explain all of those things away as non-criminal, whereas its rather difficult to explain away an email talking about how you paid someone for uploading popular pirated files, or where you send around links to illegal content in-house in internal emails, proving taht you know that the content isn't supposed to be there.

There's a fundamental difference between those things.

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Read my post history and find out. You're the guy who can learn all sorts of stuff really, really fast.

It is very difficult to distinguish between a liar and abject stupidity in cases where the liar is saying abjectly stupid things. Of course, there's nothing to say that it can't be both.

I created an account here just to respond to you friend.

You're pretty ill educated on how piracy actually works. You make a lot of claims about how piracy effects the industry but back nothing.

You also make a lot of claims about how piracy works, yet are so horribly wrong. For example, on the first page of comments you said that people get their files from 'friends' or by 'a massive server' where this is horribly wrong. You even dove into the fact that by hitting these large servers it would cause some huge disruption in how files being shared or pirated would be affected. This just goes to prove how poorly educated you are on how files are obtained and pirated these days.

You seem to be part of the anti piracy echo chamber of people who make claims but don't really understand how it works.

Let met tell you something sir, bringing down mega upload or creating a media circus of Kim Dotcom has not halted, stalled or even put a dent into how people obtain pirated material. Furthermore, your comments of the 'advanced pirates' who are using some sort of awesome tech out there is laughable. Pirated downloads come with instructions.

Did you know that it's easier these days to pirate software than it is on many occasions to obtain it legally? And on many occasions safer with the likes of paypal being hacked or things like the PSN having their servers infiltrated.

The most frightening part of all this is that pirated software, music, movies or art is not housed in some mega server or host you can bring down. Nor is it behind a company with a CEO you can scapegoat.

You also make a lot of claims about how piracy works, yet are so horribly wrong. For example, on the first page of comments you said that people get their files from 'friends' or by 'a massive server' where this is horribly wrong. You even dove into the fact that by hitting these large servers it would cause some huge disruption in how files being shared or pirated would be affected. This just goes to prove how poorly educated you are on how files are obtained and pirated these days.

I know you're pretty ignorant, but when you actually deal with what I would call "normal people" you would realize that most of them think that pirating is far, far harder than it actually is. Asking them to download a program like Bit Torrent scares them. Kazaa and Napster were very different beasts.

Yes, this is laughable. Doesn't make it any less true.

And yes, actually, hitting the big servers causes major disruptions to more casual pirates. The more you drive them to the more malware infested, user-unfriendly sites, the more damage you do to them and the less attractive piracy becomes.

There is no way to stop piracy, but your goal is mostly to make ordinary people both scared to and feel bad about pirating. If you make people view it as evil, then it becomes much easier to deal with.

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Let met tell you something sir, bringing down mega upload or creating a media circus of Kim Dotcom has not halted, stalled or even put a dent into how people obtain pirated material. Furthermore, your comments of the 'advanced pirates' who are using some sort of awesome tech out there is laughable. Pirated downloads come with instructions.

The thing you don't get is that DRM is meant to stop the sneakernet. Pirates who know what they're doing can rip out the DRM and distribute the game DRM free, which is why you have to nail those piracy sites as well.

Its not "awesome tech", and the fact that you think that normal users have any ability at doing things like this on their own is laughable. Asking them to do anything more than download and install files is asking too much of a lot of people.

And yes, actually, hitting the big servers causes major disruptions to more casual pirates. The more you drive them to the more malware infested, user-unfriendly sites, the more damage you do to them and the less attractive piracy becomes.

There is no way to stop piracy, but your goal is mostly to make ordinary people both scared to and feel bad about pirating. If you make people view it as evil, then it becomes much easier to deal with.

Hmm, what's an "ordinary people." Generalizations are hard, but at a minimum you'd need to distinguish between types of media and user demographics. The 20-somethings I know personally have been completely undeterred from using file sharing. I expect they use BitTorrent for video, and I have no idea what they use for music or software, but all they need is a few people in their social network who can figure out how to get stuff and everyone else can just tag along.

For oldsters like me, Jobs had the right idea; make purchasing stuff be convenient, consistent and not too expensive and we'll go with that instead of using TPB or whatever. We tend to have more purchasing power, less free time, and we consume less media (which makes keeping up to date with download procedures more expensive per download) - so the economics of copyright violation just don't work out.

I'm sure you're right that taking out e.g. Napster was important for deterring casual piracy, but I think 'evil' is a difficult argument to make. From where I sit, getting the economics and experience right eliminates copyright violation for a large swath of users, but the younger generation is really difficult to reach economically and at the same time they're pretty impervious to any moral panic.

Digression: The area where content producers annoy the crap out of me is DVD video. If I think I might view a video more than once (or even just show it once to a child, since they have zero tolerance for bullshit) I'll rip the main video and shelve the disk. Mandatory FBI warnings and unskippable, outdated previews, region codes, annoying menu setups... people who design these things are the most clueless idiots in any industry I know.

I would check the definition of indirectly and directly from a dictionary if I were you. That would be same as claiming post office is directly responsible for all drug traffic that goes through post, and committing directly a crime.

The post office doesn't create drugs. Megaupload did, in fact, create infringing copies to send out to end users.

So if I rip a mp3, and send it to a friend, I would be guilty of copyright infringement in US even though that is specifically stated to be legal in law here? Or what are these infringing copies megaupload has created? As far as I know the only copy megaupload has created was single mp3 that Dotcom send to singapore as a test. That isn't any different tan me creating a mp3 for my friend, which as I said would be legal here.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

Moreover, under safe harbor rules, if you don't know that something bad is going on, you're okay. But he had specific knowledge of illegal content, which means, no DMCA safe harbor. Its the difference between a postman delivering the mail, and some of it happening to contain drugs, and the postman getting paid by the cartels to deliver drugs along with the mail.

Nope. The viacom vs youtube case says general knowledge of copyright infringement isn't enough. Postman generally knows that he is delivering drugs, especially anything from columbia, and knows he is getting paid by cartels to deliver the drugs. What's more the same drug can be illegal or legal, depending on who receives it. Just like with megaupload.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

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So knowingly selling sports cars in America, driven by americans, killing americans, grieved by americans, In the G old US, that can go over the speed limit, when profiting for it is illegal? If a sports car wouldn't go over the speed limit, it wouldn't sell, and the manufacturer wouldn't profit from it...

I already explained this to you. You have revealed yourself to be a troll.

You were claiming he was directly breaking the law [citation needed], and therefore the sports cars simile wouldn't work, but he wasn't. All he was providing is a service that could be used to break the law, which is indirectly breaking the law, just like sports car manufacturers are indirectly breaking the law making cars that can go over the highest speed limit.

It wouldn't be any different for DOJ going after sports car manufacturers to curb speeding than going after Dotcom to curb copyright infringement.

But no, the truth is that the reason copyright exists, ultimately, is that you have the right to control what you made. Its the same as why you have the right to the spear you made yourself, and its the same reason why you get paid to make stuff at work.

Except that it's not equivalent to a spear.

“The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.” - Voltaire

Titanium Dragon wrote:

You do not have the right to copy other people's processes if they are protected by patent law, because you didn't come up with it. Its not yours. After a while, it becomes free for everyone to use. But starting out, no, it isn't yours.

FYI: That directly demonstrates how I.P. law is malum prohibitum, not malum in se.

You recognize that the act is not inherently evil, but is circumstantially illegal.The "you didn't come up with it" part NEVER changes.

I can see the point, but I think the US government really should have nothing to hide. However, I think they do have things to hide in this case. See, I know Kim Dot Com is guilty and yet I also know that the US government compelled the NZ authorities to violate NZ laws. And I know that the US government/authorities did not have just cause to do that.

And I suspect that it was the RIAA and the MPAA cronies who started this. So I'm pretty interested to see everyone pile onto every case involving this crapstorm. Let's get to the bottom of it all.

I think we should assume the US government has nothing to fear because they did nothing wrong, so why not let them pile on? It'll just be another victory for them, no?

1. It's odd how your entirely-hypothetical criticisms of someone else's claim are (again, presumably) good arguments, but pointing out flaws in the current system (flaws with evidence supporting them) is stupid.

The problem is that it is an utterly worthless thing to say. "Global warming is real." Yeah, thanks genius. Now, what do we do to fix it? Your suggestion of setting all the oil in the world on fire isn't a good solution, it will only make things worse.

My comment was highlighting the fact that every criticism you made of some 'unworkable' approach to works applies, today, to our current system. Perhaps you're agreeing that the current system is just as broken as the hypothetical one you were making fun of? I doubt that.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

Quote:

2. The features that I pointed out don't involve any law-breaking, so punishing 'abusers' is irrelevant.

Knowingly applying for a false patent is fraud. Knowingly filing an illicit lawsuit is also fraud. Both of these are felonies.

And I have already pointed out that the issue is enforcement.

The features that I pointed to don't require filing for false patents, nor filing 'illicit' lawsuits. You're really good at learning stuff, really fast. Do some research about how companies can use existing (and legitimate) patents to extract licensing money from companies too small to fight back. Do some research about how the desire to avoid the possibility of treble damages for willful patent infringement drives companies to systematically avoid looking at existing patents when they design new products.

Then come back and tell me that this stuff is all illegal, and is an enforcement issue.

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Read my post history and find out. You're the guy who can learn all sorts of stuff really, really fast.

It is very difficult to distinguish between a liar and abject stupidity in cases where the liar is saying abjectly stupid things. Of course, there's nothing to say that it can't be both.

Well, there you have it. You've decided that I'm a stupid liar. Put me on your ignore list and get on with your life. Better yet, spend your time in those places on the internet where you are able to be polite to people.

How have they looked stupid for trying to go after someone who knowingly dealt in pirated materials and furnished a bonus program for people involved?

That people so want to see copyright law brought down and the Government cast as the villain that they will defend people like Dotcom and lionize Swartz is baffling.

Granted, despite the claim that I tried to pull "old man internet" I do feel out of touch with a subculture completely willing to call the government lawyers out on their use of legal gymnastics while supporting actual people who are breaking the law and damaging people's livelihood. I am not a fan of strong arm government tactics or people being leveled with absurd fines for having downloaded music. But the fact remains that the individuals furnishing the means to distribute pirated materials like Megaupload and The Pirate Bay are the ones who should be facing criminal investigations.

You also make a lot of claims about how piracy works, yet are so horribly wrong. For example, on the first page of comments you said that people get their files from 'friends' or by 'a massive server' where this is horribly wrong. You even dove into the fact that by hitting these large servers it would cause some huge disruption in how files being shared or pirated would be affected. This just goes to prove how poorly educated you are on how files are obtained and pirated these days.

I know you're pretty ignorant, but when you actually deal with what I would call "normal people" you would realize that most of them think that pirating is far, far harder than it actually is. Asking them to download a program like Bit Torrent scares them. Kazaa and Napster were very different beasts.

Yes, this is laughable. Doesn't make it any less true.

And yes, actually, hitting the big servers causes major disruptions to more casual pirates. The more you drive them to the more malware infested, user-unfriendly sites, the more damage you do to them and the less attractive piracy becomes.

Wrong. Exceedingly wrong on every point.1) The casual user is not the middleman. The "normal people" are following links they find on comparably user friendly sites to get pirated software, either via bit torrent or direct download (since we are discussing MegaUpload). And we both know that all sites will never be taken down.2) Bit Torrent scares them? Who are these imaginary people scared by download software? It's not like you even really have to interact with bit torrent. You download it and ta-da, you can now download these other files. As opposed to say Kazaa or Napster where you had to learn to use a dedicated piece of software instead of the general internet.3) "scary" sites already exist and have existed during the era or Napster and Kazaa and they were primarily for distribution of keygens and exe cracks. But again, refer to point 1.

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There is no way to stop piracy, but your goal is mostly to make ordinary people both scared to and feel bad about pirating. If you make people view it as evil, then it becomes much easier to deal with.

As long as legitimate software is both exceedingly expensive and increasingly anti-user for "anti-piracy," the more likely piracy is to thrive. The only way to fight piracy is appeal to the user, which clearly the industry hasn't caught onto except in way to fuck the user over - like making it so resold games won't have all content.

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The thing you don't get is that DRM is meant to stop the sneakernet.

And fails so laughably that the anti-consumerness of it drives people to piracy where dedicated software people have stripped all the bullshit out of software making it easier to install.

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Pirates who know what they're doing can rip out the DRM and distribute the game DRM free, which is why you have to nail those piracy sites as well.

How have they looked stupid for trying to go after someone who knowingly dealt in pirated materials and furnished a bonus program for people involved?

That people so want to see copyright law brought down and the Government cast as the villain that they will defend people like Dotcom and lionize Swartz is baffling.

Granted, despite the claim that I tried to pull "old man internet" I do feel out of touch with a subculture completely willing to call the government lawyers out on their use of legal gymnastics while supporting actual people who are breaking the law and damaging people's livelihood. I am not a fan of strong arm government tactics or people being leveled with absurd fines for having downloaded music. But the fact remains that the individuals furnishing the means to distribute pirated materials like Megaupload and The Pirate Bay are the ones who should be facing criminal investigations.

Given you lumped Aaron Schwartz into your diatribe, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. You are just shaking your cane at children on your lawn.

Digression: The area where content producers annoy the crap out of me is DVD video. If I think I might view a video more than once (or even just show it once to a child, since they have zero tolerance for bullshit) I'll rip the main video and shelve the disk. Mandatory FBI warnings and unskippable, outdated previews, region codes, annoying menu setups... people who design these things are the most clueless idiots in any industry I know.

This...

That looks like a classic example of an industry not keeping up with the times. I see this in the design industry all the time--people still approaching Web content as if it were print, and mobile as if it were desktop.

There is a serious need for some refresh in the industry, as a whole...

I'm sure you're right that taking out e.g. Napster was important for deterring casual piracy, but I think 'evil' is a difficult argument to make. From where I sit, getting the economics and experience right eliminates copyright violation for a large swath of users, but the younger generation is really difficult to reach economically and at the same time they're pretty impervious to any moral panic.

This is actually a myth spread by pro-piracy people, as well as people who are just greedy and want lower prices.

In reality, games like The World of Goo (down to $1 at one point, which is well below its true value) and the various Indie Humble Bundle games (which can be purchased, the whole lot of them, for a single cent during the sale) are pirated and pirated on a massive scale. Any price above 0 will result in massive piracy.

They're bad people. There's just no getting around it. They will not pay for something if they think they can get away with not doing so.

Hack-n-Slash wrote:

FYI: That directly demonstrates how I.P. law is malum prohibitum, not malum in se.

FYI: It does no such thing.

When you die, your stuff also becomes available for other people to use. Does that mean that stealing is malum prohibitum?

Don't make stupid arguments.

Its the same principle that makes stealing malum in se that makes IP infringement malum in se, because there is no difference between the two. Is stealing someone else's land malum in se, or malum prohibitum?

Because I'm pretty sure that the Palestinians will tell you that it is malum in se, not malum prohibitum.

hpsgrad wrote:

My comment was highlighting the fact that every criticism you made of some 'unworkable' approach to works applies, today, to our current system. Perhaps you're agreeing that the current system is just as broken as the hypothetical one you were making fun of? I doubt that.

Except you're wrong, because it isn't. You were begging the question: "Well our current system is just as bad, so it is just as bad!" Yeah, no.

I pointed out important distinctions. Presently, you are allowed to recover, and there is a disincentive in place to violate the rights of others - people whine about patents costing the industry money, but it isn't really clear that that is so, because patents DO discourage companies from brazenly stealing for no reason. They don't -always- stop them from doing so, but nothing stops people from ever breaking the law or violating the rights of others. You can be setenced to death for killing someone else and some people will STILL do it.

Under your system, there is no such thing. So how is your system better? It isn't. How are they the same? They aren't.

Companies are purchased for their technology all the time, and patents are bought and sold between companies, as is other forms of IP. They are indeed percieved as valuable.

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The features that I pointed to don't require filing for false patents, nor filing 'illicit' lawsuits. You're really good at learning stuff, really fast. Do some research about how companies can use existing (and legitimate) patents to extract licensing money from companies too small to fight back. Do some research about how the desire to avoid the possibility of treble damages for willful patent infringement drives companies to systematically avoid looking at existing patents when they design new products.

Do some research about the hostile media effect, selective memory, the Dunning-Kruger effect, and the overreporting of negative incidents relative to positive ones.

I am more than aware of these things. The problem is that you lack perspective.

The flaw in your thought process is that you lack the ability to look at things subjectively. You have NO idea what you're talking about. DO bad things happen? Yes! It doesn't support your conclusion. It is not rational thinking. You have to look at the whole system, not merely the bad things, something you are incapable of doing. Why?

The average person is stupid. Even an above average person is STILL stupid. George W Bush is in the top third of the population for intelligence; do you think he is particularly bright? No. And 2/3rds of the popualtion is less intelligent than he is.

You hear about bad things because you are less likely to hear about good things because the squeaky wheel gets the grease - it is the deviation from the norm that gets reported. If someone acts particularly heroic, you hear about it. But if someone behaves normally, no one hears that. You hear bad stuff, and because you aren't very bright, and the news overwhelmingly overrepresents bad things becase they put your butt in the seat (which means more profit for them), you percieve reality as being full of problems. You are unable to see that the problems reported are much smaller than the non-problems which aren't reported.

This is a well known phenomeneon and is a major contributer to the culture of fear. The worst of it is, the people who buy into the culture of fear think that they are well informed because they read the news constantly, but they actually are -not- any better informed, and often are much worse informed about the real issues facing society because there is so much noise and constant chatter about meaningless or insignificant bullshit that helps to fuel the 24 hour news cycle.

The ability to step back and look at things objectively, to look at them rationally, to realize that no, the fact that it gets reported in the news neither makes it true nor widespread, the ability to look at studies and pick out methodological flaws, is rare. Its not that it is amazignly difficult to do, it is that most people are unwilling to do so, because it means that they might be wrong.

You are drawing bad conclusions from bad information. You assume that I am unaware of them, when in actuality I am more aware of them, and their context, than you are.

The fact that you casually devalue other people's lives (and measure their value based on their economic success) leads me to conclude that you have a very warped concept of morality, and if you want to call me immoral, I'll take it as a compliment.

What I wonder is why it took so much arguing with him to figure out the underlined part? He isn't that good at disguising his elitism.

This is actually a myth spread by pro-piracy people, as well as people who are just greedy and want lower prices.

In reality, games like The World of Goo (down to $1 at one point, which is well below its true value) and the various Indie Humble Bundle games (which can be purchased, the whole lot of them, for a single cent during the sale) are pirated and pirated on a massive scale. Any price above 0 will result in massive piracy.

To paraphrase a quote I heard somewhere (this particular one was about mp3s), you can't have zero privacy and if you attempt to get to zero piracy, you will make consumption so difficult that you will have zero industry.

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Its the same principle that makes stealing malum in se that makes IP infringement malum in se, because there is no difference between the two.

How, exactly, is IP infringement tantamount to theft.

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I am more than aware of these things. The problem is that you lack perspective.

I'm sure glad we have you here otherwise how would we know the puzzle is actually a field of flowers due to our narrow perspective that you self-admittedly don't have!

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The flaw in your thought process is that you lack the ability to look at things subjectively.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.EDIT: Woe be to the world were everyone cursed with only a sense of objectivity!

Given you lumped Aaron Schwartz into your diatribe, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. You are just shaking your cane at children on your lawn.

How so? Isn't Swartz one of the people that culture glorifies? He disagreed with the fact that JSTOR had every right to charge for access to their servers. Much of what he was trying to steal was available in other places. I appreciated JSTOR while I was in college, and the cost to my college for access was pretty insignificant. Swartz disagreed with the legal right of JSTOR to manage its own files. Many people agreed. He broke the law though. So we are expected to ignore Swartz and his law breaking, but make the government the criminals in both the Dotcom and Swartz cases? I honestly don't understand that thought process.

Given you lumped Aaron Schwartz into your diatribe, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. You are just shaking your cane at children on your lawn.

How so? Isn't Swartz one of the people that culture glorifies? He disagreed with the fact that JSTOR had every right to charge for access to their servers. Much of what he was trying to steal was available in other places. I appreciated JSTOR while I was in college, and the cost to my college for access was pretty insignificant. Swartz disagreed with the legal right of JSTOR to manage its own files. Many people agreed. He broke the law though. So we are expected to ignore Swartz and his law breaking, but make the government the criminals in both the Dotcom and Swartz cases? I honestly don't understand that thought process.

Because you don't understand how to differentiate. It's like saying "Martin Luther King Jr, ergo Hitler"

The fact that you casually devalue other people's lives (and measure their value based on their economic success) leads me to conclude that you have a very warped concept of morality, and if you want to call me immoral, I'll take it as a compliment.

What I wonder is why it took so much arguing with him to figure out the underlined part? He isn't that good at disguising his elitism.

Elitism or arrogance? In his eyes we are absolute morons if we do not absolutely toe his party line.

Well, folks, if you ever wondered what internet shilling looks like, here it is, in this thread. This is what's called manufactured controversy. They've got the lead guy out in front, posting huge, misleading diatribes, in which he mixes fiction and fact, lying his head off to manipulate you into agreeing with him. And then you see multiple new accounts signing up to express support for the shill; this may be the shill himself, or it may be other people employed by the same firm.

Among the actual Ars readership, this isn't much of a controversy at all. By and large, we believe that everyone is entitled to proper due process and the maintenance of all their rights, no matter what claims the government makes about what an evil, horrible person the defendant is. It doesn't matter how evil and horrible he is, he still has rights.

The only time you NEED rights is when the government hates you and wants you imprisoned or dead. If they can just point the finger at you, raid you, and throw you in jail, simply by making an assertion, then you don't have rights, you have privileges in exchange for conformity.

And that's really what the Dotcom articles are about; lack of due process, the attempt by the government to convict by loud assertion instead of by proof. And they're doing it again here, trying to keep Dotcom out of a case that's very important to his defense, trying to keep him shut away from evidence that he needs to show their malfeasance.

The US government, and to a lesser degree the NZ government, screwed up here. They screwed up bad. The shills are trying hard to distract from that. They're trying really hard to convince you that he's guilty, but in a free country, legal convictions need evidence, not just lots of shouting.

Ignore the shouting. Stick to the facts. It doesn't matter what the government claims Dotcom did or didn't do; what matters is what they can prove. All this bluster and noise is to distract you from that basic fact.

Because you don't understand how to differentiate. It's like saying "Martin Luther King Jr, ergo Hitler"

Apparently not. I see both as facets of the culture that has little or no respect for copyright or ownership of digital information.

Malor: Someone is a shill for the government if they oppose Dotcom or support copyright? Respecting the law is as important as if not more so than due process (which is itself a component of the legal process but not more important than the entire system itself). And people finally being tired of seeing the same anti-government commentary on the comments threads and deciding that they will finally register an account shouldn't be seen dummy accounts (which you cannot prove but why let a good conspircy go to waste right?) it should be a sign that there are more than just the same posters in an echo chamber.

But we will talk about due process and ignore actual laws broken right? Makes for a more entertaining conversation and a feel good environment.

I'm sure you're right that taking out e.g. Napster was important for deterring casual piracy, but I think 'evil' is a difficult argument to make. From where I sit, getting the economics and experience right eliminates copyright violation for a large swath of users, but the younger generation is really difficult to reach economically and at the same time they're pretty impervious to any moral panic.

This is actually a myth spread by pro-piracy people, as well as people who are just greedy and want lower prices.

In reality, games like The World of Goo (down to $1 at one point, which is well below its true value) and the various Indie Humble Bundle games (which can be purchased, the whole lot of them, for a single cent during the sale) are pirated and pirated on a massive scale. Any price above 0 will result in massive piracy.

They're bad people. There's just no getting around it. They will not pay for something if they think they can get away with not doing so.

Sorry, what's the myth here? I don't see a meaningful distinction between "difficult to reach economically" and "not willing to spend a cent." (At the pricing you're talking about, clearly the issue is the cost of going through a financial transaction at all, not the price of the good in question.) I honestly don't know how the content industry could reach this generation of people who are habituated to getting everything for free, immediately. Apparently I'm not alone, since it isn't happening.

But I draw the line at calling them "bad people" - copyright is a relatively recently constructed right*, created in response to copying becoming economically viable, which is now faced with the reality of copying becoming almost indistinguishable from free. Many people whose livelihood depended on copyright are going to go unpaid, and their type of work will no longer be able to support employment. We'll have less The White Album and more The Grey Album, less Christopher Boffoli and more Banksy.

Art will definitely change, but it's not going to disappear. At this point, the transition looks to be inevitable.

Well, folks, if you ever wondered what internet shilling looks like, here it is, in this thread. This is what's called manufactured controversy. They've got the lead guy out in front, posting huge, misleading diatribes, in which he mixes fiction and fact, lying his head off to manipulate you into agreeing with him. And then you see multiple new accounts signing up to express support for the shill; this may be the shill himself, or it may be other people employed by the same firm.

The only thing missing from your hypothesis is a motive; what role does the Ars reader base have to play in Dotcom's trial, or anything surrounding it? We're just chewing the fat here, and nobody's particularly convinced by anyone's more outlandish claims anyway. Even if you're right, the ROI looks abysmal.

Because you don't understand how to differentiate. It's like saying "Martin Luther King Jr, ergo Hitler"

Apparently not. I see both as facets of the culture that has little or no respect for copyright or ownership of digital information.

Like I said, you don't understand how to differentiate and it's tantamount to equating Hitler and MLK Jr - ie, "All crimes are equal." Which is patently absurd and demonstrably false unless you are some sort of robot. Swartz and Dotcom were working two entirely different angles with two entirely different ends.

Well, folks, if you ever wondered what internet shilling looks like, here it is, in this thread. This is what's called manufactured controversy. They've got the lead guy out in front, posting huge, misleading diatribes, in which he mixes fiction and fact, lying his head off to manipulate you into agreeing with him. And then you see multiple new accounts signing up to express support for the shill; this may be the shill himself, or it may be other people employed by the same firm.

Among the actual Ars readership, this isn't much of a controversy at all. By and large, we believe that everyone is entitled to proper due process and the maintenance of all their rights, no matter what claims the government makes about what an evil, horrible person the defendant is. It doesn't matter how evil and horrible he is, he still has rights.

The only time you NEED rights is when the government hates you and wants you imprisoned or dead. If they can just point the finger at you, raid you, and throw you in jail, simply by making an assertion, then you don't have rights, you have privileges in exchange for conformity.

The difference between a mild totalitarian state you are describing and Nazi Germany is a matter of degree not kind. The underlying attitude is the same: obedience. including toeing the partly line, or risk imprisonment. The difference in degree is only what will get one imprisoned and to some extent the how much they government keeps up a facade of due process and rule of law.

Quote:

And that's really what the Dotcom articles are about; lack of due process, the attempt by the government to convict by loud assertion instead of by proof. And they're doing it again here, trying to keep Dotcom out of a case that's very important to his defense, trying to keep him shut away from evidence that he needs to show their malfeasance.

The US government, and to a lesser degree the NZ government, screwed up here. They screwed up bad. The shills are trying hard to distract from that. They're trying really hard to convince you that he's guilty, but in a free country, legal convictions need evidence, not just lots of shouting.

What we believe about guilt or innocence does is not relevant what you said below is relevant

Quote:

Ignore the shouting. Stick to the facts. It doesn't matter what the government claims Dotcom did or didn't do; what matters is what they can prove. All this bluster and noise is to distract you from that basic fact.

I'm sure you're right that taking out e.g. Napster was important for deterring casual piracy, but I think 'evil' is a difficult argument to make. From where I sit, getting the economics and experience right eliminates copyright violation for a large swath of users, but the younger generation is really difficult to reach economically and at the same time they're pretty impervious to any moral panic.

This is actually a myth spread by pro-piracy people, as well as people who are just greedy and want lower prices.

In reality, games like The World of Goo (down to $1 at one point, which is well below its true value) and the various Indie Humble Bundle games (which can be purchased, the whole lot of them, for a single cent during the sale) are pirated and pirated on a massive scale. Any price above 0 will result in massive piracy.

They're bad people. There's just no getting around it. They will not pay for something if they think they can get away with not doing so.

Hack-n-Slash wrote:

FYI: That directly demonstrates how I.P. law is malum prohibitum, not malum in se.

FYI: It does no such thing.

When you die, your stuff also becomes available for other people to use. Does that mean that stealing is malum prohibitum?

Don't make stupid arguments.

Its the same principle that makes stealing malum in se that makes IP infringement malum in se, because there is no difference between the two. Is stealing someone else's land malum in se, or malum prohibitum?

Because I'm pretty sure that the Palestinians will tell you that it is malum in se, not malum prohibitum.

hpsgrad wrote:

My comment was highlighting the fact that every criticism you made of some 'unworkable' approach to works applies, today, to our current system. Perhaps you're agreeing that the current system is just as broken as the hypothetical one you were making fun of? I doubt that.

Except you're wrong, because it isn't. You were begging the question: "Well our current system is just as bad, so it is just as bad!" Yeah, no.

I pointed out important distinctions. Presently, you are allowed to recover, and there is a disincentive in place to violate the rights of others - people whine about patents costing the industry money, but it isn't really clear that that is so, because patents DO discourage companies from brazenly stealing for no reason. They don't -always- stop them from doing so, but nothing stops people from ever breaking the law or violating the rights of others. You can be setenced to death for killing someone else and some people will STILL do it.

Under your system, there is no such thing. So how is your system better? It isn't. How are they the same? They aren't.

Companies are purchased for their technology all the time, and patents are bought and sold between companies, as is other forms of IP. They are indeed percieved as valuable.

Quote:

The features that I pointed to don't require filing for false patents, nor filing 'illicit' lawsuits. You're really good at learning stuff, really fast. Do some research about how companies can use existing (and legitimate) patents to extract licensing money from companies too small to fight back. Do some research about how the desire to avoid the possibility of treble damages for willful patent infringement drives companies to systematically avoid looking at existing patents when they design new products.

Do some research about the hostile media effect, selective memory, the Dunning-Kruger effect, and the overreporting of negative incidents relative to positive ones.

I am more than aware of these things. The problem is that you lack perspective.

The flaw in your thought process is that you lack the ability to look at things subjectively. You have NO idea what you're talking about. DO bad things happen? Yes! It doesn't support your conclusion. It is not rational thinking. You have to look at the whole system, not merely the bad things, something you are incapable of doing. Why?

The average person is stupid. Even an above average person is STILL stupid. George W Bush is in the top third of the population for intelligence; do you think he is particularly bright? No. And 2/3rds of the popualtion is less intelligent than he is.

You hear about bad things because you are less likely to hear about good things because the squeaky wheel gets the grease - it is the deviation from the norm that gets reported. If someone acts particularly heroic, you hear about it. But if someone behaves normally, no one hears that. You hear bad stuff, and because you aren't very bright, and the news overwhelmingly overrepresents bad things becase they put your butt in the seat (which means more profit for them), you percieve reality as being full of problems. You are unable to see that the problems reported are much smaller than the non-problems which aren't reported.

This is a well known phenomeneon and is a major contributer to the culture of fear. The worst of it is, the people who buy into the culture of fear think that they are well informed because they read the news constantly, but they actually are -not- any better informed, and often are much worse informed about the real issues facing society because there is so much noise and constant chatter about meaningless or insignificant bullshit that helps to fuel the 24 hour news cycle.

The ability to step back and look at things objectively, to look at them rationally, to realize that no, the fact that it gets reported in the news neither makes it true nor widespread, the ability to look at studies and pick out methodological flaws, is rare. Its not that it is amazignly difficult to do, it is that most people are unwilling to do so, because it means that they might be wrong.

You are drawing bad conclusions from bad information. You assume that I am unaware of them, when in actuality I am more aware of them, and their context, than you are.

You start off your post discussing rumors spread by pro-piracy people yet the entire rest of your post is generalized, states ZERO facts and sites non-existent rumors as matter of fact.

Now, who's spreading rumors?

I will make a statement as a matter of fact and cite a real life experience so you understand where I'm coming from.

I fix home PC's for a living. I do this in Eastern Michigan which is nowhere near a major metropolis area. It's in a very rural area.

I fix on average 10-20 PC's a week from various customers ranging from a kid who likes first person shooters to the stay at home mom all the way up to the grandma who plays facebook or shockwave games.

You want to know, from first hand experience who's pirating using bit torrent clients and sites like TBP or a random torrent search engine? All of them. That's right. I have not encountered an age group who doesn't do it or who isn't afraid. I've asked them where they get the software from and they all tell me the same thing 'my friend/retaliative showed me through [insert chat program here]'

In fact, all levels of users from novice to advanced would all have things like Tor installed or peer guardian along with proxies setup to spoof their IP. See, these things are widely available on the internet and easily obtained though what are very safe websites. As it stands, the pirating sites are safer than Facebook as the majority of the computers which come in are ones that 'a friend sent me this link on facebook and now I get all these popups'.

To go into the whole DRM thing you so avidly defend. As it stands, it's a joke. It doesn't stop pirating at all. An example I can give is a grandmother and her granddaughter who are regular clients of mine both play Sims on identical computers. The both bought them at the Best Buy at the same time and got a matching set. The grandmother brought her computer in complaining about the performance of her computer as opposed to her granddaughters playing the same expansion pack of Sims. After some digging, I found the reason her Granddaughter wasn't experiencing the issues was that she had downloaded a pirated, DRM free version that didn't require the Origin program to run in the background where the grandmother was running from the disk.

Now, as an end user, I have to sympathize with the grandmother here. I mean, they both own the game and all of the expansions. But the grand daughter plays a better version that's pirated because she doesn't have the additional overhead required to play the game.

This is what we're getting at when we say that if software is not appealing to the customer, they will find ways to get around it so that they have a better experience.

Is the granddaughter wrong? Did she break the law? She owns the game, but doesn't want to have some shit on her computer that is in effect, spyware.

The granddaughter found the pirated version by searching google (like I told her to do when she has a PC issue) for "Performance Issues With Sims" and read a few forum threads. Most complained about the EA DRM software and provided a work around, the most popular was 'download a pirated, drm free version'.

Another example I'm gonna give. When SPORE was released, the DRM prevented you from installing the game more than 3 times ever. Another customer came in complaining that her computer was infected with a virus after she installed the game. So, she uninstalled it, ran a virus scan and it was still there. She used good virus software (Kasperski) along with Malwarebytes and ran her CCleaner regularly. She was a very good customer. Anyway, after her 3rd try of installing the game, Kasperski kept telling her that she had a virus. She was at her wits end and finally brought it in.

Come to find out, the DRM associated with the game Spore was spitting out a false positive (as DRM is theoretically a root kit) due to it not being cleared though known signatures yet. She had installed the game > 3 times and was fed up with it so she attempted to return the game to the store and was denied.

She's out the $50 she spent on the game. Has, basically, a rootkit now installed on her computer from a game manufacturer and the game made a better coaster than actual software to play.

Again, you boost this DRM stuff as it's god's gift to antipiracy, where all it does is hurt the end user.

More people will find ways around things that inconvenience them until the greedy people in the industry figure out how to make software accessible and easy.

Right now, the fastest growing music and movie services are the ones that are a monthly fee with access. Pay per file is now being phased out and anyone who makes their service easy and accessible will win this race. Distributors who work and spend millions to protect will be left behind as they are just making more overhead for their product. Instead, if they made it easier to obtain, as pirated software, music and movies are, people will use it instead.

What's my proof?

Look how popular Netflix is. It's literally shutting down the home rental industry such as blockbuster who didn't adapt.

Yet both violated copyright law. No they are not the same and I didn't connect the two through their actions but by the fact that both receive support from the same community. They are viewed as victims of over reaching government. The thing is, in Swartz case, he was guilty, it was just a question of what he would be convicted of or plead too. He couldn't handle the pressure and chose to end his life. In Dotcom's case, we know he hosted illegal information and supported the sharing of that information.

Neither person respected the current system of copyright, and it is an unnecessarily complicated system to be sure, but that is where the connection between the two ends. Claiming I was connecting them in so preposterous a way as to compare it to MLK and Hitler isn't factual and hopefully I have clarified that.

Yet both violated copyright law. No they are not the same and I didn't connect the two through their actions but by the fact that both receive support from the same community. They are viewed as victims of over reaching government. The thing is, in Swartz case, he was guilty, it was just a question of what he would be convicted of or plead too. He couldn't handle the pressure and chose to end his life. In Dotcom's case, we know he hosted illegal information and supported the sharing of that information.

Neither person respected the current system of copyright, and it is an unnecessarily complicated system to be sure, but that is where the connection between the two ends. Claiming I was connecting them in so preposterous a way as to compare it to MLK and Hitler isn't factual and hopefully I have clarified that.

Swartz wasn't guilty of breaking copyright laws. Go back and re-read what laws he broke.

Dotcom wasn't hosting, he was providing a hosting service and his users hosted. What needs to be proven is if he allowed his users to do this knowingly.

Yet both violated copyright law. No they are not the same and I didn't connect the two through their actions but by the fact that both receive support from the same community.

You are conflating opposition to government tactics with support for the person and actions.

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They are viewed as victims of over reaching government.

Because they are.

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Neither person respected the current system of copyright,

Did you not JUST get finished saying they are not the same and you didn't connect the two through their actions? Right. Don't piss on me and tell me it's raining

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but that is where the connection between the two ends. Claiming I was connecting them in so preposterous a way as to compare it to MLK and Hitler isn't factual and hopefully I have clarified that.

It's 100% factual because I was using this grammatical construct called hyperbole. I was exaggerating the situation to make a point - the point that you are taking two entirely different things and going "ipso facto, the same." Great, I can do that too - MLK Jr, Hitler. Two people committed crimes therefore who cares WHY they did it or WHAT they ACTUALLY did because they committed crimes.

You do not have the right to copy other people's processes if they are protected by patent law, because you didn't come up with it. Its not yours. After a while, it becomes free for everyone to use. But starting out, no, it isn't yours.

FYI: That directly demonstrates how I.P. law is malum prohibitum, not malum in se.

FYI: It does no such thing.

When you die, your stuff also becomes available for other people to use.

Its the same principle that makes stealing malum in se that makes IP infringement malum in se, because there is no difference between the two. Is stealing someone else's land malum in se, or malum prohibitum?

If the two *are* the same, then you should be arguing for infinite/indefinite duration IP laws instead of saying you're for shorter copyright durations. At least then you'd be consistent.

Even if we are being hyperbolic, the laws broken by MLK and Hitler were in no way similar or connected.

In the case of Swartz, he illegally accessed the MIT servers to get access to the JSTOR archive. The JSTOR archive had pretty clear terms of use and fall under a similar protected as copyright as far as I know. Dotcom provided space for people to host content and apparently rewarded users whose content was shared didn't he?

Both broke laws connected to exchanging or obtaining content that was protected and their actions seem to have the same people supporting them. In both cases the supporters oppose the idea information "ownership" and reject the idea that the government can be anything but an enforcement arm of Big Content.

I'm not about to present a massive wall of text that people will skip over, but I can say that people are harmed by copyright infringement.

In the case of Swartz, he illegally accessed the MIT servers to get access to the JSTOR archive. The JSTOR archive had pretty clear terms of use and fall under a similar protected as copyright as far as I know.

JSTOR archive files aren't copyrightable. They are public records. Once you have them you are free to use them any way you choose. Print books, read on radio, sing on streets, whatever you choose.

Aren't they still limited by the terms of use from the institution allowing access?

Don't think so. If Swartz had been a student with allowed access to the JSTOR and not done the crawling automatically, they wouldn't have anything to prosecute him. With those they could try to use computer fraud law against him, which is a bit of stretch as the university didn't think it was.